Illustration from USC Today by Dana Smith; collage photos courtesy of Lydia Daniller, Greg Perez, and USC Special Collections (Hancock Foundation Building and Tommy Trojan).
In last Tuesday’s (12/12) USC Today, the newspaper of the University of Southern California, Lilledeshan Bose writes, “Brian Lauritzen … a trained cellist and journalist, knew he wanted to work in radio, but where?… The way the KUSC hosts talked about music was so compelling, he says, that it inspired him to apply for a job at KUSC—and then move across the country when he got it…. He now hosts the weekday afternoon drive on Classical KUSC, nationwide concert broadcasts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the choral music program ‘A Joyful Noise.’… In 2011, USC acquired KDFC in San Francisco and expanded the classical network to 10 cities … The radio network known as Classical California now reaches around 1.5 million listeners per month. KUSC alone has the largest classical radio audience in the country, reaching more than 900,000 listeners each month over the air. KDFC and the other stations add another 500,000 radio listeners, with an additional 185,000 from the Classical California streams online. Part of what makes it so popular, Lauritzen says, is the vibe … ‘California is at the leading edge of the arts in this country and at the leading edge of what classical music organizations are doing,’ he says.”
